This will all depend on liability insurance costs and getting permission from housing covenant authorities to erect these things. I'm betting a lot of residents will see turbines as unsightly. My proof is the refusal of the Kennedys to allow commercial turbines near their compound.
Right now, the majority of tablet devices use ARM processors. If this continues and M$ is creating an ARM-friendly version, linux could be the OS of choice.
I agree. The chip and PIN has its limits. The magnetic strip is useless and outdated. Here's my view
Most people use a single PIN for everything. Hence it is part of a solution. Multi-part authentication is key to increasing security. Add in an RSA keyfob, and a personal public/private key certificate on the chip. Here's how it works.
Waiter brings the payment device to the customer. This device uses a network not part of the restaurant network. A VPN tunnel will suffice, so long as it is encrypted.
The customer inserts the card, and unlocks the PPK certificate with the PIN. The PIN is comprised of letters and numbers, say 6-14 characters, eliminating the debit card PIN re-use.
Finally, the transaction is authorized using the RSA keyfob's constantly changing number.
The system isn't foolproof. The customer is always the weakest link, and businesses prefer to make spending easier, not harder. It will eliminate the card swipe and make lifting the PIN harder.
Finally, require a voice print authorization from the card holder for purchases over $500 and/or purchases per day over a pre-set limit. This will make stealing a card a lot less attractive.
You can always tell a company's relevance by the lawsuits they file.
There's this one.
Microsoft vs TomTom over FAT
Apple vs Microsoft over the use of a GUI. Not their finest moment, foretold years of problems for Apple.
I could go on, but slashdot readers know the score.
Openess is a fine thing, but let's not forget the tyrany of the mob. No Open Source project is a free-for-all. Apple was never billed as a open source company. Never. Darwin had as much to do with OSX as a stripped down car does with it's fully outfitted luxury brother.
Apple's modus operandi is providing tools and a platform that allows createive and not-so-creative types to perform tasks that 90% of users want to accomplish. Apple made the P.C. into a toaster. A very nice toaster. If you want total control of the OS, I recommend the Linux-From-Scratch project.
Ubuntu would probably not satisfy the true *nix/mage anyway.
The earthquake in Haiti is horrible. The human cost, unimaginable. Decades of corruption, slavery, and exploitation by the larger Caribean powers (which includes the U.S.) has left this nation in ruins. This article is hardly surprising, given the level of anarchy. The efforts of the Amerture Radio community are admirable and quite brave. The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, etc are doing amazing things in dangerous conditions. I fully support all legitimate efforts to assist this nation's rebuilding efforts except for one area.
You cannot cancel Haiti's debt without reforming this badly broken nation's government, police force, military, beaurocracy, and schools.
This should be the 21st Century's first rebuilding effort by Western World. Think of it as the continuation and modernization of the Monore Doctrine. Accept help from the rest of the world, but start treating these failed/failing states in the New World as part of a larger neighborhood.
I agree. Cell phone use, partuclarly texting, as taken over how many people communicate. In the interests of civility, and safety, technology can help by providing opt-out or opt-in options:
- opt-out: Don't text me, call or email instead
- opt-in: text-only messaging mode. A sort of "airplane mode" but for privacy. The voice mail message will offer the caller the opportunity to send a text.
- opt-out: while driving. Pair your phone with a car, set the car's options to block all notifications or re-direct all notifications to another service while the car is in motion.
- opt-out: conversation mode via a button or via an app. Silence the phone for a set period of time in five minute increments.
Offer these as convenience features and see what happens. You can't force etiquette, but you can make it easy to enact.
Let's face it. Michael Moore made this movie to tell a story and to make a point. He took all of the research and interviews, screened them for useful pieces, and then assembled them in order to make his statement. The moive is a collage of pieces designed to turn people against the Iraqi war and to call for the Persident's head at election time.
When/if you see the movie keep this in mind: He always supports the Democrat no matter who's on the ticket. He blindly pulls the Dems' party line and never questions it. He has not problem living a lavish Hollywood lifestyle while at the same time calling for higher taxes on the common man. Then ask yourself: Are these the values that I want represented in Washington? Could I afford the lifestyle that I have now if my payroll taxes were 50% higher then they are now? If Saddam isn't a threat to the US, then why didn't the last President pull US troops home?
Flame on!
Comcast: The Microsoft of Cable TV
on
TechTV.com RIP
·
· Score: 1
Proof once again that if you can't beat your competition with a better product, if your parent company has lots of free cash lying around, you can buy and liquidate them. So long TechTV, you will be missed.
Being able to switch between a WiFi and a cell network at will is a cool feature. How will the cell service providers make money? If users (esp. business users) start using their VoIP cell phones (and not running up huge daytime minute charges) will we see some sort of kluge-ware or fee added in to disuade this practice?
If Comapq could reverse-engineer IBM's BIOS and AMD could do the same to Intel's CPU, how long will it be before someone does the same to this 'secure TCP' that Cisco is seeking to patent?
Of course a closed-source TCP stack would mean that anyone with a mixed equipment and/or a mixed OS environment would have to decline Cisco's TCP implementation or go with another vendor. These Patents will only server to take companies down, not protect profits and stock prices. Once again, the buisness world has forgotten that only the strong survive, and the weak can mearly throw up roadblocks.
If Microsoft shuts out all non-MS systems and their own pre-Loghorn OSes they will be sealing themselves in a coffin.
No business in the world can afford to upgrade whole-hog to a new OS in a single purchse, and few IT depts will put money into a 2 or 5 year old PC. Bringing a new OS into their network that will not communicate with any of the existing OSes would be a huge waste of money. It's for this reason that TCP/IP was created for the DoD in the first place.
For another example take Nintendo. The original NES games won't play on the N64. Playstation 2 can play Playstation 1 games, giving the market time to generate new games for the new platform and providing the end-user an incentive to upgrade. Nintendo lost market share because an upgrade meant tossing away all existing N-1 games or keeping the old (and often unreliable) console.
This same lock-out will deny Loghorn the upgrade or addoption incentive. If end-users can't run their existing and/or proprietary software they will start returning PCs to vendors or refuse to buy PCs with Loghorn installed. Vendors will refuse to load Loghorn and demand another OS from MS or opt for a different OS vendor all togeher.
In summary, MS's Loghorn will die because it makes little economic sense for business that make PCs and for those businesses that buy them. In the end, it may be MS that kills itself.
Don't forget all you conspiracy types: Any transmission can be traced and cell phonce calls aren't secure. The government largely doesn't care what you do so long as you don't get fameous or infamous. That's why you don't get busted for going five miles over the speed limit but 20 will get you pulled over. If the government wants to find you they will and usually will because of your own carelessness, not some secret technology.
The hype surrounding the SCO vs Linux issue is pointless.
Some Open Source code writer will post a patch that replaces the SCO mentioned code with new code. Call it reverse-engineering. Call it reinventing-the-wheel. Whaterver.
I bet that this patch would be implementd quickly, thus negating SCO's case and putting another failed company out of it's missery.
This could have been ended months ago!
I've read the replies, and they all make good points, but no one has given an answer that addresses all aspects of the problem. Here's what I've come up with:
1. Set a connectivity policy. Produce a list of the patches that have proven reliable on your production systems and sugest to the students that they only use these as well. I don't know if the MS Corportae Update idea will work here as I've never had experience with this. Force students to register their IPs with the network by MAC address. Many students will hate this initally but this will keep the number of assigned IPs to a minimum.
2. Segment your network and asign bandwidth according to an agreed upon policy. ie: The administration department probably won't do much web browsing but a scientific lab might need more bandwidth to conduct some if its research. Maybe cut the amount of bandwidth available to the dorms during business hours and open it up more during 'off-peak' hours. Again students will go nuts initially but most won't care so long as they can surf and email at a reasonable rate.
3. Set up automated network montiors/scanners to look for potential trouble. If you practice active monitoring eventually you'll be able to set up 'red flags' to alert the sysadmins of a problem workstation. For instance if said workstaion's normal network activity increases by a factor of 75%, it should be checked out! Also block the obvious ports that hackers and malicious logic like to utilize for attacks. And stay current on what those ports are!
4. Require Anti-Virus software. Plain and simple, you can't connect without it! Offer a place that's 'cached' with the latest updates for programs like Norton AV and McAfee to save the bandwidth utilized. See if you can work a 'Student Price' for the more popular ones with the major vendors. Maybe requrie students to utilize a 'virus scanning CD' that's available from the RA's office to pre-scan PCs prior to connection to the network.
5. Offer security software to protect users from 'nusance' programs like XJupiter. I'm using SpyWare Guard at work and it's kept my IE from getting screwed up. At home I use Mozilla.
6. Use block lists on your firewall to keep the ad-windows at bay. I've installed a list compiled by Eric Howes at http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~ehowes/main-nf.htm. Once I added these sites to my firewall all pop-up ads ceased without the addition of new software to my workstation!
7. (and this is just my idea, if only I were a freshman again, I'd make a bundle!) Start a company on the side that offers in-dorm set-up of a computer to students. You can utilize students interested in making a few bucks and see to it that said workstations are configured properly to avoid infestations of maliciou-logic (and clean to start with).
I like the idea of setting up a 'quarantine VLAN' and a 'blackhole VLAN' to segment problem workstations off the active network. So long as all users are aware of it and the logon screen that they are presented with are clear and appropriately worded the amount of 'flaming' should be minimum. And make sure that your University/College Presidents are 100% behind you before doing anything that might invoke the student's ire! But once said workstation has been 'quarantined' it should be realitively easy for him/her to fix said problem(s) and get back on the network. How is for another discussion.
I'm sure there are most issues here than 1. the number of workstaitons being connected, 2. the lack of anti-virus software and patches on said workstations, 3. the tendency of students to blow their configurations away and start from scratch. But I think that it's a good start. Any additions?
I say 'nay' (or maybe 'Ni!') to another attempt by Citizen Gates to take more control over the end user's life. For users that are on a dial-up ISP, an 11 or 14 MB update will slow their system speed to a crawl and generate lots of hate calls to the service providers. Plus as a corporate IT manager I've enough work made for me and my staff having to shut down or securing all of the unnecessary crap that MS loads into the OS. For example:
Outlook Express (and the icons that go with it)
(and who's idea was it to make OE mandatory?)
Messenger Service, Alerter, etc.
Remote Access
Etc. I could go on but you see my point.
Okay everyone, set the sociological arguments aside for a moment and consider this: Most of this information is already collected and is in varrious databases kept by the states and localities that dispense the help. Or did you think that you wouldn't have to fill out a form or four for some government sponsored aid?
Slashdot Mirror
What happens if we don't "participate" Comrade Obama?
What's next? A Council of Americanism?
I recommend learning and reading over passive propaganda any day.
Try these non-political books: Naked Economics and Learn to Earn.
Leave the passive stuff to the sheep.
This will all depend on liability insurance costs and getting permission from housing covenant authorities to erect these things. I'm betting a lot of residents will see turbines as unsightly. My proof is the refusal of the Kennedys to allow commercial turbines near their compound.
Right now, the majority of tablet devices use ARM processors. If this continues and M$ is creating an ARM-friendly version, linux could be the OS of choice.
I agree. The chip and PIN has its limits. The magnetic strip is useless and outdated. Here's my view
Most people use a single PIN for everything. Hence it is part of a solution. Multi-part authentication is key to increasing security. Add in an RSA keyfob, and a personal public/private key certificate on the chip. Here's how it works.
Waiter brings the payment device to the customer. This device uses a network not part of the restaurant network. A VPN tunnel will suffice, so long as it is encrypted.
The customer inserts the card, and unlocks the PPK certificate with the PIN. The PIN is comprised of letters and numbers, say 6-14 characters, eliminating the debit card PIN re-use.
Finally, the transaction is authorized using the RSA keyfob's constantly changing number.
The system isn't foolproof. The customer is always the weakest link, and businesses prefer to make spending easier, not harder. It will eliminate the card swipe and make lifting the PIN harder.
Finally, require a voice print authorization from the card holder for purchases over $500 and/or purchases per day over a pre-set limit. This will make stealing a card a lot less attractive.
You can always tell a company's relevance by the lawsuits they file.
There's this one.
Microsoft vs TomTom over FAT
Apple vs Microsoft over the use of a GUI. Not their finest moment, foretold years of problems for Apple.
I could go on, but slashdot readers know the score.
Openess is a fine thing, but let's not forget the tyrany of the mob. No Open Source project is a free-for-all. Apple was never billed as a open source company. Never. Darwin had as much to do with OSX as a stripped down car does with it's fully outfitted luxury brother.
Apple's modus operandi is providing tools and a platform that allows createive and not-so-creative types to perform tasks that 90% of users want to accomplish. Apple made the P.C. into a toaster. A very nice toaster. If you want total control of the OS, I recommend the Linux-From-Scratch project.
Ubuntu would probably not satisfy the true *nix/mage anyway.
The earthquake in Haiti is horrible. The human cost, unimaginable. Decades of corruption, slavery, and exploitation by the larger Caribean powers (which includes the U.S.) has left this nation in ruins. This article is hardly surprising, given the level of anarchy. The efforts of the Amerture Radio community are admirable and quite brave. The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, etc are doing amazing things in dangerous conditions. I fully support all legitimate efforts to assist this nation's rebuilding efforts except for one area.
Some call for cancelling Haiti's debt:
Cancel Haiti's debt
Rich Nations Call for Haiti Debt Relief
You cannot cancel Haiti's debt without reforming this badly broken nation's government, police force, military, beaurocracy, and schools.
This should be the 21st Century's first rebuilding effort by Western World. Think of it as the continuation and modernization of the Monore Doctrine. Accept help from the rest of the world, but start treating these failed/failing states in the New World as part of a larger neighborhood.
- opt-out: Don't text me, call or email instead
- opt-in: text-only messaging mode. A sort of "airplane mode" but for privacy. The voice mail message will offer the caller the opportunity to send a text.
- opt-out: while driving. Pair your phone with a car, set the car's options to block all notifications or re-direct all notifications to another service while the car is in motion.
- opt-out: conversation mode via a button or via an app. Silence the phone for a set period of time in five minute increments.
Offer these as convenience features and see what happens. You can't force etiquette, but you can make it easy to enact.
Let's face it. Michael Moore made this movie to tell a story and to make a point. He took all of the research and interviews, screened them for useful pieces, and then assembled them in order to make his statement. The moive is a collage of pieces designed to turn people against the Iraqi war and to call for the Persident's head at election time. When/if you see the movie keep this in mind: He always supports the Democrat no matter who's on the ticket. He blindly pulls the Dems' party line and never questions it. He has not problem living a lavish Hollywood lifestyle while at the same time calling for higher taxes on the common man. Then ask yourself: Are these the values that I want represented in Washington? Could I afford the lifestyle that I have now if my payroll taxes were 50% higher then they are now? If Saddam isn't a threat to the US, then why didn't the last President pull US troops home? Flame on!
Proof once again that if you can't beat your competition with a better product, if your parent company has lots of free cash lying around, you can buy and liquidate them. So long TechTV, you will be missed.
Being able to switch between a WiFi and a cell network at will is a cool feature. How will the cell service providers make money? If users (esp. business users) start using their VoIP cell phones (and not running up huge daytime minute charges) will we see some sort of kluge-ware or fee added in to disuade this practice?
I know this is obivous, but cell phones are already sans wires.
If Comapq could reverse-engineer IBM's BIOS and AMD could do the same to Intel's CPU, how long will it be before someone does the same to this 'secure TCP' that Cisco is seeking to patent? Of course a closed-source TCP stack would mean that anyone with a mixed equipment and/or a mixed OS environment would have to decline Cisco's TCP implementation or go with another vendor. These Patents will only server to take companies down, not protect profits and stock prices. Once again, the buisness world has forgotten that only the strong survive, and the weak can mearly throw up roadblocks.
No business in the world can afford to upgrade whole-hog to a new OS in a single purchse, and few IT depts will put money into a 2 or 5 year old PC. Bringing a new OS into their network that will not communicate with any of the existing OSes would be a huge waste of money. It's for this reason that TCP/IP was created for the DoD in the first place.
For another example take Nintendo. The original NES games won't play on the N64. Playstation 2 can play Playstation 1 games, giving the market time to generate new games for the new platform and providing the end-user an incentive to upgrade. Nintendo lost market share because an upgrade meant tossing away all existing N-1 games or keeping the old (and often unreliable) console.
This same lock-out will deny Loghorn the upgrade or addoption incentive. If end-users can't run their existing and/or proprietary software they will start returning PCs to vendors or refuse to buy PCs with Loghorn installed. Vendors will refuse to load Loghorn and demand another OS from MS or opt for a different OS vendor all togeher.
In summary, MS's Loghorn will die because it makes little economic sense for business that make PCs and for those businesses that buy them. In the end, it may be MS that kills itself.
Don't forget all you conspiracy types: Any transmission can be traced and cell phonce calls aren't secure.
The government largely doesn't care what you do so long as you don't get fameous or infamous. That's why you don't get busted for going five miles over the speed limit but 20 will get you pulled over.
If the government wants to find you they will and usually will because of your own carelessness, not some secret technology.
The hype surrounding the SCO vs Linux issue is pointless. Some Open Source code writer will post a patch that replaces the SCO mentioned code with new code. Call it reverse-engineering. Call it reinventing-the-wheel. Whaterver. I bet that this patch would be implementd quickly, thus negating SCO's case and putting another failed company out of it's missery. This could have been ended months ago!
I've read the replies, and they all make good points, but no one has given an answer that addresses all aspects of the problem. Here's what I've come up with: 1. Set a connectivity policy. Produce a list of the patches that have proven reliable on your production systems and sugest to the students that they only use these as well. I don't know if the MS Corportae Update idea will work here as I've never had experience with this. Force students to register their IPs with the network by MAC address. Many students will hate this initally but this will keep the number of assigned IPs to a minimum. 2. Segment your network and asign bandwidth according to an agreed upon policy. ie: The administration department probably won't do much web browsing but a scientific lab might need more bandwidth to conduct some if its research. Maybe cut the amount of bandwidth available to the dorms during business hours and open it up more during 'off-peak' hours. Again students will go nuts initially but most won't care so long as they can surf and email at a reasonable rate. 3. Set up automated network montiors/scanners to look for potential trouble. If you practice active monitoring eventually you'll be able to set up 'red flags' to alert the sysadmins of a problem workstation. For instance if said workstaion's normal network activity increases by a factor of 75%, it should be checked out! Also block the obvious ports that hackers and malicious logic like to utilize for attacks. And stay current on what those ports are! 4. Require Anti-Virus software. Plain and simple, you can't connect without it! Offer a place that's 'cached' with the latest updates for programs like Norton AV and McAfee to save the bandwidth utilized. See if you can work a 'Student Price' for the more popular ones with the major vendors. Maybe requrie students to utilize a 'virus scanning CD' that's available from the RA's office to pre-scan PCs prior to connection to the network. 5. Offer security software to protect users from 'nusance' programs like XJupiter. I'm using SpyWare Guard at work and it's kept my IE from getting screwed up. At home I use Mozilla. 6. Use block lists on your firewall to keep the ad-windows at bay. I've installed a list compiled by Eric Howes at http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~ehowes/main-nf.htm. Once I added these sites to my firewall all pop-up ads ceased without the addition of new software to my workstation! 7. (and this is just my idea, if only I were a freshman again, I'd make a bundle!) Start a company on the side that offers in-dorm set-up of a computer to students. You can utilize students interested in making a few bucks and see to it that said workstations are configured properly to avoid infestations of maliciou-logic (and clean to start with). I like the idea of setting up a 'quarantine VLAN' and a 'blackhole VLAN' to segment problem workstations off the active network. So long as all users are aware of it and the logon screen that they are presented with are clear and appropriately worded the amount of 'flaming' should be minimum. And make sure that your University/College Presidents are 100% behind you before doing anything that might invoke the student's ire! But once said workstation has been 'quarantined' it should be realitively easy for him/her to fix said problem(s) and get back on the network. How is for another discussion. I'm sure there are most issues here than 1. the number of workstaitons being connected, 2. the lack of anti-virus software and patches on said workstations, 3. the tendency of students to blow their configurations away and start from scratch. But I think that it's a good start. Any additions?
I say 'nay' (or maybe 'Ni!') to another attempt by Citizen Gates to take more control over the end user's life. For users that are on a dial-up ISP, an 11 or 14 MB update will slow their system speed to a crawl and generate lots of hate calls to the service providers. Plus as a corporate IT manager I've enough work made for me and my staff having to shut down or securing all of the unnecessary crap that MS loads into the OS. For example: Outlook Express (and the icons that go with it) (and who's idea was it to make OE mandatory?) Messenger Service, Alerter, etc. Remote Access Etc. I could go on but you see my point.
Okay everyone, set the sociological arguments aside for a moment and consider this: Most of this information is already collected and is in varrious databases kept by the states and localities that dispense the help. Or did you think that you wouldn't have to fill out a form or four for some government sponsored aid?